Posts Tagged ‘Depression’
From Nowhere
Luckily, I don’t bet on my sports fan hunches. I didn’t expect the Gopher football team to snatch the victory in their game Saturday afternoon. I didn’t expect the Blue Jays to lose Game 7 of the World Series. I firmly doubted the Vikings were going to get the better of Detroit yesterday.
I was not surprised that the order to once again change the clocks back an hour to Standard Time would disorient activities associated with my sleep, the feeding times for animals, and bedtime for Asher. It seems to me that an agreement will never be reached to settle on a year-round, consistent time rule in the USA.
Humans are so intelligent, we should leave the clocks alone and change the hours of our activities if there is a need to do things only when it is light outside. Another option would be to put a big mirror out on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to reflect sunlight on our population centers for the hours when natural daylight is shorter than our lifestyles demand.
We had some fine-looking moonlight glowing through the clouds last night after the hour-earlier sunset had transpired.
Cyndie and I spent the middle of the day yesterday seeing Jeremy Allen White’s impersonation of Bruce Springsteen in the movie “Deliver Me from Nowhere.” I went in with little knowledge of the storyline and came out much better informed about the Boss’s struggle with depression in the heyday of his early success.
It was a powerful depiction of how the weight of childhood stress can become too much to carry as adults if never addressed.
A lot of improved health can be achieved when seeking help from professionals sooner in our lives. I sure wish I had recognized my condition a lot earlier than I did.
Having successfully treated my depression has helped me immensely to cope with common stresses, like twice-a-year clock changes, for example. I might whine about it, but it doesn’t push me into the dark world of dysfunctional thinking that was a hallmark of my experiences.
Being delivered from nowhere is a precious thing, indeed.
.
.
Feeling Small
Last night, Cyndie and I finished the 5th episode of the streaming Apple TV+ documentary series “The Me You Can’t See,” about mental health, hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry. There are so many issues people live with that we cannot know about unless the person chooses to talk about them.
It’s been so many years since I gained control over my depression that I don’t talk about it so much. That documentary makes me think I should discuss my experience more regularly than I do. The folks who participated in the series exposing their struggles to the world showed laudable courage in sharing what is traditionally kept secret.
Three thoughts of my suffering spring to mind instantly when I contemplate the years when I was sliding deeper toward clinical depression.
- Triggered beyond my ability to cope, I stepped outside one of the basement doors of the lake house into a dark winter night wearing no outdoor clothing and laid down, curling into a fetal position in a snow drift, desperately yearning to vanish from existence.
- A Monday morning when I couldn’t muster the resources to get out of bed, finding I wasn’t able to do more than utter a grunt in response to a query from my wife as to whether I was going to get up or not. It was later that morning, alone in the house, that I sat on the end of the bed, called our clinic, and asked to be seen. When the voice on the phone asked for a reason, I choked on the words, and she made the appointment available for as soon as I could get there.
- Some period of time after treatment with Prozac and Psychiatrist visits had occurred, I found myself sitting downstairs by the door to the garage with car keys in my hand. After years of imagining suicide as a way to fantasize my way out of the doom and gloom I was drowning in, this was the first time I took a physical step toward acting on the idea. Luckily, in realizing that, I seemed to scare myself straight.
I was already aware that the onset of treatment didn’t automatically stop depression instantaneously and that sometimes things can continue to get worse before they get better, so I used having car keys in my hand as the turning point from the worst to a blessed incremental improvement toward freedom from the beast.
Early in the talk therapy sessions, I learned that my suicidal fantasies needed to be banned. That was a habit that had been perfected starting when I was very young, and it took a while to break it. Eventually, when visions would pop into my head, they came across as comical to me and carried no weight. It got easier and easier to banish them as quickly as they came. In time, it just stopped happening.
Hoping to free myself from living on Prozac for the rest of my life, I asked my psychiatrist to let me stop taking it. She pushed back and convinced me to stay the course. I agreed to respect her wishes if she agreed to consider it a future possibility. The next time I asked, she agreed to wean me off under close supervision.
Compared to the mental health challenges depicted in the documentary, mine feel small, even though I know it’s illogical to measure one person’s experience against another. We are all seeking a resolution of our burdens in a way that works for us.
One way is to look directly into the eyes of whatever monster is looming and which you’ve been avoiding. It (in my case, depression) doesn’t have the power over you that you think it does. Marshaling the courage to look right at it cuts it down to size and can make it much more manageable to address, especially when you have trained professionals for support along the way.
.
.
Barely Enough
It has been two weeks now since I instantaneously and possibly irrationally set forth on an expedition of sorts to live in complete seclusion from political news. Completely unprepared, I threw myself into this odyssey as a mechanism of self-preservation. Two weeks is a pretty small sample size since I could potentially need to keep up this practice for years, but it has paid dividends thus far.
However, my avoidance of news has fallen short of overcoming the sadness that subtly paints the background of each moment, knowing that the very thing I am ignoring continues to exist and wield its negative influence on the world.
For most of my life, I have escaped periods of deep angst by fantasizing about imagined outcomes. In my most unhealthy periods of depression, the scripts usually involved outcomes where I no longer existed. Since treating my depression, I have been practicing healthier fantasies.
I like to imagine…
- a world filled with honesty, truthfulness, equity, justice, love, peace, and an endless wealth of happiness.
- that every child is nurtured in a healthy way by people who love them.
- no person being forced to live in a situation of housing insecurity.
- religions of the world wouldn’t lead people to do harm to others or act in conflict with the guise of their teachings.
- no countries fighting wars, period.
- all employers offering profit-sharing and opportunities for employee ownership.
- credit card companies never trying to entice me with spam messages and snail mail but being willing to take my application whenever I decide it’s what I want.
- every kid who ever wanted a puppy could get one and pets always come already house-trained and obedient to commands.
- a world where professional athletes don’t do post-game interviews after victories, where they try to use words to describe feelings that no words can describe. It would be a bonus for me if they don’t first thank their god for the win. Heck, it’s my fantasy, they just won’t.
- sadness not having the advantage over happiness in people who experience depression.
- that everyone who I fondly remember senses that I am thinking about them and feels the love I send.
- human bodies not giving out before a person’s spirit and soul are ready for the end of a life’s journey.
- no food insecurity anywhere on the planet.
- as long as I’m imagining, ice cream can be eaten at any time in any amount with no negative consequences.
- there are no precious metals or jewels that humans seek and value for vanity or status.
Will Steger & Paul Schurke navigating, “North to the Pole,” Crown Publishers, 1987
- humans not having disturbing problems over sex and sexuality.
- governments working transparently and ethically for their citizens’ best quality of life.
- people not living in fear and not experiencing unfounded fears about possible worst outcomes.
- being able to watch the news without psychological pain over what is actually happening.
.
Can you see how hard it is for me to stay in the positive when I am imagining my happy fantasy world?
It is a long journey into my wilderness of news avoidance, with constant course corrections and frequent healthy reframing of my view of the world. I feel like I should have gotten sponsors and stocked custom thermal insulated outerwear, cool-looking boots, and plenty of high-quality foods to sustain me on this journey of news-free exploration.
For the moment, what I’m working with seems like it’s barely enough.
.
.
Around Again
Sitting on the cold, hard ground with a pile of dog treats beside me, I watched as Asher passionately made another manic pass around the neighbor’s outbuilding. Their cat had dashed under a tiny opening to avoid capture. Sure, I was feeling angry. He had clearly disrespected my commands for the last twenty minutes as he freely trotted along well beyond the repeatedly demonstrated limits of our property, but that wasn’t entirely unexpected.
No, what was irking me even more was the way our horse, Light, walked right up to my face while I was cutting through the back pasture and without warning, reared up on her hind legs giving me a much too close encounter with one of her front hooves. WTF, girl!
My startled audible response was enough to get all the horses to react, rearranging themselves to different positions. I didn’t have time to deal with them at the moment because I was on a mission to regain control of Asher while thinking about what model of shock collar I wanted to convince Cyndie we should buy.
When I crested the hill of the hay field, I caught sight of Asher and saw him turn toward me in response to my call. Then he crossed the road and continued his illicit sniff-fari along the cornfield’s edge in gross defiance.
I phoned Cyndie and asked her to ring the “dinner” bell at our front door because we’ve trained him to return to that and sometimes it actually works. He definitely heard it. He turned and began to run. I thought we had him and I started running for the gate near the driveway to meet him, but he kept going along the road and headed directly for the neighbor’s place with the cockapoo and the barn cat.
Did I mention it was cold? I really didn’t want to be sitting on the ground, but it was obvious that Asher was not going to allow me to catch him. I needed him to come to me. Offering food was not enough enticement. Each time he came around the building, he returned to the spot the cat had snuck under. Each time he took off around again, I moved closer to that spot.
Finally, I was able to reach him and attach the leash to his harness. I am not proud of my performance as I practically dragged him back the long walk to our house on that leash.
The ambiance in the house was warm and pleasant as I whipped dog and leash through the door before slamming it angrily to go feed the horses and pretend I wasn’t thoroughly pissed with Light’s unsafe behavior.
I was triggered, majorly. My old self would have proceeded ignorantly. I wanted to shut down. I didn’t want to look at the dog ever again. I didn’t want to be the only one feeding the horses every day. I didn’t want animals. I didn’t want to be married.
You see where this was headed. But, I know better now. My depression has been treated by professionals.
I have also learned life lessons from horses. I quickly got back to grazing. Deep breaths. When Light began her spastic leg flexing that always ends up spilling her feed pan, I stood beside her and moved my hand soothingly along her chest and leg until she calmed down.
We don’t always take the time to do that for her. In this case, I was also doing it for me.
.
.
Greatest Accomplishment
I’ve been contemplating a life well-lived after remotely participating in a funeral online last week and then learning of an anticipated death in our friends’ family. Being in the phase of life when I’m closer to my death than I am to my birth, it occurs to me that my greatest accomplishments are quite possibly behind me as opposed to yet to come.
Most days, I feel that my greatest achievement happened when I took action to get treatment for depression. After many years of self-denial about what I was battling, receiving the confirmation of a professional diagnosis was the key that opened the door for my journey toward healthy thinking. Initially relying on medication and talk therapy to interrupt a life-long pattern of dysfunctional thinking, I eventually gained enough command of my faculties to cope on my own, medication-free.
One book I found helpful is “Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn’t Teach You and Medication Can’t Give You” by Richard O’Connor.
I still need to treat my natural inclination toward depression every day with healthy thinking, a reasonable diet, regular exercise, and good-quality sleep habits, but reaching the point where I don’t require support from the medical health industry is something I am proud to have achieved.
Last November and December brought a fresh challenge for me in managing the chemicals bathing my brain in the face of grief and fatigue. The combination of needing to first put down our cat, Pequenita, and then our dog, Delilah, mixed with striving to cope with Cyndie’s unexpected injury pushed me to my limits. I was the sole person tending to the horses (during which two highly stressful horse-health challenges arose), cleared snow after two significant snowfall events, and took over all tasks caring for Cyndie and the house while she is laid up.
The physical fatigue left me susceptible to allowing my old familiar depressive behaviors to return. I don’t find that worrisome because years of good mental health have provided a fresh setting for “normal” that I use for reference, allowing me to notice when intervention is warranted. I have a variety of options to employ but the key to being able to self-treat my depression is the “noticing” and consciously changing something in response.
Mostly, I change my thinking. My thoughts are a major trigger to the chemical reactions going on in my brain and body. Sometimes I just need a nap. Often times I just need more time. Especially when the trigger is grief.
Speaking of grief, the horses were giving me some grief recently. This is a case where it would have been nice to have a camera recording what goes on under the overhang when we are not around.
Somehow they picked up the grate in one of the slow feeder boxes and turned it sideways. I guess they’ve got some great accomplishments of their own to neigh about.
.
.
Barriers Down
I will admit the ongoing pressure of caretaking the rash of events we’ve faced in the last month is making it hard for me to maintain a sunny disposition. My positive outlook is getting worn to a frazzle and the lonesome walk to the barn had become something I started to dread. The prescribed confinement of Mix intended to guard her leg against any further damage was not only taking a toll on Mix’s state of mind but the other three were starting to show their frustration, too, not to mention how it was weighing increasingly heavy on me.
With support from our liaison to This Old Horse who has been coming over twice a day to convince Mix to swallow her meds, we gradually opened more space for our injured mare. This morning I opened the gates allowing all four horses to intermingle throughout the two paddocks as one herd.
I think their relief was second to my own. It is one less thing I need to be concerned with in our daily routine. Just in time for what the week ahead holds for us. I will be driving Cyndie to multiple appointments and on Tuesday or Wednesday, I will likely need to clear snow.
It will make my life much easier if Mix and the other horses aren’t unhappy with their situation. I’m hoping that having Mix’s barriers down will help me to feel happier, too!
.
.
Just Cry
Without intentional effort to think positively, a person could easily find the ongoing trials and tribulations of the world too much to bear.
Sometimes I just want to cry over the horrors of present wars and the calamities of global warming, the destructive inequality between rich and poor, the failure of government to serve people before corporations, and the masses of people who believe that lying and hurting others can be justified to achieve their desired ends.
Cyndie and I plant some trees and tend to our forest to help a few local acres of the planet.
We love and care for four rescued Thoroughbred mares residing on our land.
We treat people respectfully in our occasional interactions and manifest loving intentions for family, friends, and the world at large.
Still, sometimes the pain and sorrow in the world bring tears to my eyes.
If there is any justice in this world, those who are enduring suffering will sense recognition that tears are being shared in their honor in the same way that loving energy vibrations radiate throughout the universe.
Here’s wishing that happiness and laughter actually outweigh sadness and crying around the planet as a whole.
At least then I could be crying tears of joy.
.
.
Admittedly Isolated
I’m home alone with the animals again this weekend and contemplating the incredible peacefulness and beauty that I enjoy the luxury of experiencing here every day. This morning the horses radiated peacefulness under a foggy wet blanket of sound-dampening air. It was Delilah who disrupted things every so often with her random barks of alarm over imagined threats that really don’t deserve to be barked at from my perspective.
As I methodically made my way around the paddocks to scoop up recent manure piles, my mind meandered through so many trials and tribulations that we aren’t facing.
Our country has not been invaded and bombed by a bordering nation that was pretending to be doing our people a favor. Our region has yet to be torched by wildfires or swamped by unprecedented flash flooding. Extremist politicians haven’t maliciously trafficked hapless immigrants to our doorstep. We are not experiencing a shortage of food or potable water. We are not struggling with the debilitations of long-COVID infection.
The much more benign burdens directly impacting me this day include two issues that aren’t happening as swiftly as I wish. I’m wondering if the technician who will splice our fiber optic cable at the base of the utility pole across the street from our driveway works on Saturdays. Nobody showed up by the end of the day yesterday even though the cable to our house was buried last Tuesday.
I’m also anxious to receive a promised bid from our favorite excavating business regarding the landscaping of the slopes on either side of our new driveway. We’ve decided the job is too big to accomplish on our own and will require a truckload of dirt they can provide. It’s been a week since he was here to discuss the issues.
It’s pretty easy for me to preach about having a positive attitude about how great it is to be alive when I reside in a sanctuary of natural beauty and affluent comforts. I am sensitive about boasting too assertively from our admittedly isolated circumstances in the world, but my perspective is coming from having successfully treated a depression that shadowed much of my earlier life.
Our daughter is enduring the stress of knowing a vulnerable adult who walked out of her music school before his father did and has now been missing for days. Our hearts ache for those who are suffering.
I walk through our woods to a soundtrack of calling birds and water droplets coming down from wet tree leaves, the autumn aromas of fallen leaves just beginning to become noticeable. The horses huff a big sigh as I show up to clean the area beneath the overhang and serve up their pans of feed.
What can I do but send the love I experience out into the universe to flow toward all who face difficulties that I struggle to fathom, recognizing the privilege of my isolation.
.
.
Clay Bennett
I have no words. The artwork and message of Clay Bennett speak for me today.
.
.
Painful Loss
I knew Jennifer to be a precious, congenial, and amiable person, despite the experiences she lived through that drove her to multiple treatments for mental health concerns. Every time I saw her again after long absences, that remarkable dose of her true spark and desire to gain full command of her wellness glowed anew.
My idealistic goal of loving everyone on this earth is not always effortlessly achieved. Jenny was not one of the difficult ones. I loved her as easily as anyone.
It is devastating to have learned that she took her own life this week.
Those of us who knew and loved Jenny are experiencing the pain of losing the sound of her laughter, for good this time. It is we who must now reconcile the mental turmoil of the various roles we played in her life, of opportunities now vanished, hopes tarnished, with the burdens of sudden grief pressing down upon us.
As a person who has enjoyed great success in breaking free of the oppressive mental weight of depression, with all of its distortions of perception and its focus on imagined perils, I suffer deep heartbreak over instances where the interruption and amelioration of the affliction are unsuccessful.
There is debate about whether depression is curable or not, but there is general agreement that it is treatable. Good health requires maintenance, and being treated by professionals for depression can be a project of a lifetime.
In a way, good health habits are a self-directed form of treatment that keeps my depression at bay. It doesn’t feel focused on depression prevention for me because my healthy practices bring so many other rewards beyond just keeping my mind free from the dark dysfunctions that define the affliction.
Put simply, living healthy serves as a vaccination against the ills of depression for me.
It feels important to me to accentuate the time component of dealing with depression and frankly, all other aspects of a journey toward optimal health. I am profoundly moved by the length of time and variety of avenues Jenny navigated in her efforts toward health and well-being.
Good health does not happen in an instant as a result of a momentary desire to be healthy. It is a process that requires firm determination to stay on task for days that become weeks, then months, and ultimately, years. I often point out that a goal of getting healthy should be referenced against the number of months or years we allowed bad habits to weaken our muscles, add excess fat, compromise our livers, overtax our hearts, rob us of needed sleep, and ignore or misinterpret our full range of emotions.
May we always remember the best about loved ones who are no longer with us and seek inspiration from those fond memories for a determination to strive for our own optimal health in a journey that we renew every morning for the rest of our days.
Amen.
.
For any occasion involving thoughts of suicide, free 24/7, confidential services are available:
call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800-273-8255), or text the Crisis Text Line (text HOME to 741741).
.
.
Relative Something 